Poker Goodies

First of all I would like to remind you all that the main event of this year’s WSOP has started. Some pros are already out, some others are still in contention.

My ups and downs of the WSOP so far:

Ups:

1. There are more and more “amateurs” (aka online players, online (semi-)professionals, …) every year. I don’t have the exact number, but it’s safe to assume that they’re making up the majority of this year’s events and it’s already more than likely that yet another amateur will rise to WSOP championship glory this year – any bets on the online poker room they qualified on (it seems that PokerStars is having the biggest number of runners so they might have their fourth WSOP ME Champion in a row, although I wouldn’t underestimate some other poker rooms’ incentives, which could be the extra motivation – as if anyone needed extra motivation with 10.000.000$ up for grabs along with the fame (although 10+10mil sounds even better – the FullTilt deal))?

2. At least some people are still trying to work their butts off to bring you interesting stories, updates and recounts as the “we sold exclusive rights, so not all goes”-approach allows. Quick reminder: Otis, Wil, Dr. Pauly, CJ and some other guys are delivering some awesome content over at the official pokerstarsblog. Dr. Pauly delivers some more of his wsop goodness, especially blogger updates over at the Tao of Poker – although the frequency of the “Last 5 Pros I Pissed Next to…” segments is steadily declining.

3. Phil Hellmuth won his record-tying 10th WSOP bracelet. While this might be a surprise, I gotta say that this is truely an up for me. He’s on of my favourite players: he’s not only one of the greatest when it comes to tournament poker, but I really enjoy watching his rants at the tables, especially when another donkey “who can’t even spell poker” sucks out on him…

5. Some video updates from cardplayer were quite interesting. The regular coverage mostly sucks though, so no link love for you.

Downs:

1. Coverage. While some bloggers are trying their best (see above), their efforts are still undermined by the official and exclusive coverage (chipcounts, etc). Sorry, but an update here and there with numerous errors (e.g. hand history posted smack in the middle of an update shows that someone won with a boat, yet the text says he won with a flush, etc etc etc) and delays is just not good enough (although the situation has slightly improved since the start of the WSOP).

2. TV coverage. While this is the “biggest event in sports”, there’s no coverage to be found anywhere around here. Some stations are having a poker summer and showing the WSOP – the bad thing though: that’s the WSOP 2004, yawn.

…but enough of the WSOP and off to my own playing. I decided to consolidate my bankroll by transferring money from numerous poker rooms to a select few poker rooms. It’s just not good to spread out the roll over many rooms. So I pulled the plug on mansion (too little traffic atm, I might had back sometime later) and UltimateBet (haven’t played there in ages anyway). Before I fire up the roll at Stars though I wanted to give a “newer” room a shot. WorldPokerExchange is the only poker room offering rake free play. It would be better to call it 100% rakeback as you pay the normal rake and then you get it all back after some days (once a week as far as I can tell). While traffic isn’t great (the times I played so far the numbers were something like 1-2k players), the prospect of saving all the juice is groovy though. After going through my logs of different rooms I found that what many already said is true: it’s hard to stay ahead of the rake at the low limits, especially when you count normal variance. So I’m going to play most of my SnGs on WPX for a while and see what that adds up to – I’m sure it’s going to be quite a lot as the usual rake per SnG is a flat fee of 10% which adds up, especially if you’re playing SnGs almost every day.

I mentioned firing up the roll at Stars earlier on. This is due to the fact that I set a new goal for myself. I want to take the game to the next level and out of the online poker realm. While the home game series I play in is getting better and better as we bought casino style poker tables and just started a championship race which will determine the best player over the course of a year, I would love to get in some real (casino) tournament live action. So I’ll try to qualify for one of the EPT events! I don’t know which one it’ll be, but my current favourites are London and Baden, Austria. I don’t know which qualifying route to take yet as there seems to be a lack of double shootouts, which would have been my preferred option. I’ll keep you posted on the status of my qualification…

Wow. Now that was the blogger tourney with the biggest price-pool that I can remember. 1450$ in total, after 62 buys, 160 rebuys and 48 add-ons (including the 100$ addon from Mike’s site). Really nice to see that the winner could take home 435$ 🙂

It wasn’t me though, but I’m still satisfied. It was fun, although it was crazy early on. That’s what sets rebuy tourneys apart from most other tourneys. Players are not worried about pushing their (more marginal) hands early on as there’s always the chance to rebuy until the first break. So basically the first hour is really different from any other first hour of the regular brogger tourneys (WWdN, Mookie, etc). I was able to push my 1010 into Wes‘ QQ early on, but then, after my first and last rebuy and some nice pots, the hand happened: I look down at KK and they hold up against Wes and another opponents hand and I’m looking at a monster-stack of over 15k in chips (starting chips 1500). So I was in the chiplead after 35 minutes and should remain in the spot at the sun for another hour:

After that I went into the maintain stack modus. It was easy enough to steal some blinds here and there as we approached the first break and the end of the rebuy period. Most players took the addon (2k chips for 5$), I passed as I was still in the chiplead.

Then the card-deadness set in and I thought it’d be a long night, then I look down at the hammer in the SB…folded around and I raise to 800 (4xBB)…DuggleBogey in the BB only has a stack of slightly over 2k left, so he pushes…now I can’t laydown the hammer to a 1.2k raise, so I call…Duggle shows 66…sure enough the hammer does me good with a 7 on the flop and the not necessary 2 on the river. I bust Duggle and take a note to self: “Hammer g00t!” 😉

After that it’s more card-deadness…I swear I’ve never seen so many 47o, 48o, 36o in my life. In what feels like an eternity (I didn’t really have a look at the clock, so it could have been only 20 minutes) I didn’t see a single face card, so it was fold fold fold, even when in the BB as people starting to turn on the heat. Then I finally look down at a real hand again QQ…I raise the usual 3BB, one caller…flop comes down xKx with two hearts. I check, he bets…I call. Turn is another heart. I check he checks behind me. River is another heart. Now I don’t have a heart and I’m almost certain I’m done…I check, he checks. He shows flush King high (he held 44 with the 4h). Yuck. This hand got me thinking: First mistake – not betting at least half the pot. If I make a half-pot sized bet here he can either fold, call or reraise. If he’s reraising I can still think about the pot-odds and if I believe his King in the first place. So a informational bet would have been in order here. Second mistake – bet the turn, even if he had a King chances are good he doesn’t have a heart at all or at least a small or two small ones. Third mistake – bet the river (if it would have come down to this), he had “only” 5k left, which would have put a dent into my stack, but I’m not sure he would have called down in the first place with his measly 44…so this one was clearly my fault.

After that hand I’m down to 10k with the average stack size approaching 15k. Damn! A few hands later a short-stack pushes and it’s up to me in the BB to decide: fold or call the additional 2.5k with Q9. Now I’m the first to admit that this is a loose call, but Q9 was the best hand (apart from the QQ) I was holding in ages and the fact that a short-stack can push with such a huge range of hands made me call. He shows K10, K on the flop and that’s that. Now I’m stuck with roughly 7.5k. The biggest stack at the time was smokkee approaching 50k. Now I’m not on tilt or anything, but my card-deadness, the fact that it’s after 5am and the fact that I want some chips back lead me to play looser and looser. A few preflop raises called just to fold on the flop or turn quickly lead me to an all-time low and the back of the pack with just 2.6k left. So I basically have to push with the next semi-decent hand. I’m UTG and look down at A5, not really a decent hand, but hell, next hand I’m the BB which would cost me 800…so there’s no other option. One caller…his K10o beats my ass as yet another King hits the flop. Out in 22nd place 🙁

Ups:

1. Playing at a tough, but really entertaining starting table including our table rebuy-kings shadowtwin and Wes…

Well, I don’t have a clue what they are thinking putting a monkey into the Main Event, although many people have already called this year’s WSOP a zoo, so it might be not that far out after all. That said, I don’t have a clue about what the monkey is capable of either, so it’s really hard to say…so I’m moving on to a comedy prediction…:

I. Phil Hellmuth will have a strong run in this year’s Main Event. One thing is for sure though: he will blowup sooner or later (I’m guessing later this time), but it inevitable – the super-donkeys-worst-players-ever-tilt is upon him for sure, especially due to the donkey/pro ratio which should be huge this year.

II. Negreanu: I hope he goes deep, I like to watch him. I guess it all depends on the run of cards in the end (remember last year where he got sucked out on time and time again and couldn’t make a hand in return when he was drawing?)..

III. Perry Friedman: Hmm…maybe his faces he paints on his hands sometimes can give me a clue :p

IV. Chris Ferguson: Jesus will do well, too. I don’t see him going ultra-deep though

V. Da Chimp: He will spend most of the time in the later stages of day 1 on the rail for dropping a p&p-bomb – yes that’s a poo&pee-bomb: after starting out pretty well by sucking out on some donkeys, it’s going to be his time to get sucked out on. After getting sucked out on, he’ll turn on the inner aggression monkey and crap all over the table…this will earn him a 2h penalty, which will be enough to almost blind him out. Shortly after that he’s going to be all-in with da bananas (77) and double up, which in turn will lead to yet another railtime as the “happy monkey dance” isn’t allowed on the dealer’s head…this time the penalty is only 1h, but it’ll be enough to blind him out… 🙂

Started out with Waffles, Duggle, Miami Don and our host at table 1…played a mix of tight-passive (early on)/tight-aggressive poker and was successfull. After nearly two hours we sit down at the final table…

…then right before the second break the following hand comes down:

I’m in the BB with 88, Dnasty raises it 3BB from the SB, I call…flop comes down 8-9-10 rainbow, so unless he’s got me set over set I’m golden, he insta-pushes…I insta-call…he shows AA…nice! So no straight to fear…dealer does his magic and drops a friggin A on the river…no 9144 chips for me, but out in 8th place (6 ITM, top 3 get the ipods).

Now I’m not going to go off in a Hellmuth style rant or moan like The Mouth after getting yet another junk kicking…after all it was best hand in, best hand out, but considering the fact that the money didn’t go in preflop, there’s at least a little thing to moan about: flop 86/9 (5 tie), turn 77/5 (18 tie)…friggin river 0/100…and a Mike “The Mouth” Matusow quote is in order “There’s no justice in poker…”…thank you.

…and before I forgot it due to the whole steaming like a fresh pile of poo thing: Once again thanks to Mike for hosting!

No poker content today, I really needed a break from poker today after yesterday’s live game. So nothing special today, apart from a little information piece:

If you’ve got a ghey diary or poker brog aka poker blog feel free to comment for inclusion in my blogroll. In addition to that you can get yourself some link love by submitting your blog to one of my directories (head over to this page and submit, I’ll approve you)…that’s all for now…cya tomorrow at the BloggerPods tourney…

Sometimes you gotta wonder if the old myth of the first time luckbox is really true. Tonight we played our 15th home game with three premiers and a surprise:

1. We bought two real poker tables to replace our old setup of two “normal” tables with some felt overlay.

2. We started our “championship race” – we will play our home game tourney like always, but we take out a small percentage of the prize pool and the final table players will receive points for their finish. At the end of one year from now, the top three in the championship will receive something extra (we haven’t decided yet if it’s going to be cash or prizes).
3. We welcomed a new player

4. The surprise: we’re getting some t-shirts made for all the (regular) players…I’ll post a pic of the logo as soon as I get my hands on the digital files.

The rest was the usual: the usual crowd, the usual setup, the usual payout, etc. So we start off at our first table and I’m running good early on (up almost 100%). Then I’m bouncing up and down until we’re at the final table. I’m sitting in the middle of the pack and after some players bust out we’re on the bubble. Sure enough I’m card dead and have been for a while. So I’m happy to push once I look down at a rag ace…just to be called by our new player, who holds, what a surprise, AK…no help for me and I’m out on the bubble. A few hands later he busts the remaining two players with a pair of threes (vs AKo and A5s)…so first game, first win. Nice…he played well, but he got lucky not only once but on a few occasions. All good though…we all know that variance will kick in sooner or later 😉

After the results were written down we decided to start a second tourney, this time with half the buyin and just one table (only 5 players wanted to play again)…quick summary: Got some good cards early on and maintained my stack until we were headsup…yes…against the new player…it all came down to one hand…I look down at 1010 on the button, but I just call…he checks out of the BB and is first to act after the flop comes down AA5…he pushes…now I’m either in big doo-doo or I’m golden, I decide that I don’t believe he’s got an ace (why would he push there with one?)…so I call and he flips K2o…my 10s hold up and I win the second tourney…w00t.

Now I come home to write this down along with the results and I find that my mail-server is acting up…great to see that all mails of the entire day were rejected (yup, that’s rejected, so no queue…gone…), great…I found that the antivirus software was the culprit…I hope that an update will solve this mess, if not this thing is out of here…alrighty…enough babbling…gotta catch some sleep…see you all on sunday (blogger pods)…if you didn’t signup already head over to pokeronamac and register – it’s more competition for me and the other players who already signed up, but it’s good for Mike (dbirider) and what’s good for Mike is good for us in the long run as I would love to see similar promotions in the future 😉 so get your lazy behind in gear and register, before it’s too late…

So, the second lot of auctions are indeed online now…so for anyone who missed out on the first lot (see here), here’s your second chance – same goes for anyone else: head over to the ebay auctions, now!

Almost forgot, next week it’s time for yet another DADI. It’s almost guaranteed to be a donkeylicious event, after all it’s the first rebuy ever! There’s added prices and what not again, so check the following pic for all the details.

What many fellow bloggers and players in general already told over and over again is really true: (some/most/a lot of) players at PartyPoker are weak. So I hit the SnGs the last few days, although I mostly dislike the costs. What am I talking about? I mean at the limits I play (usually 5$ SnGs) Party is by far the greediest poker room I’ve seen in my life – 5$ for the SnG, 1$ fee (all other rooms I play charge .50$). So that sucks, but it’s not all that bad if you’re running good. I played 4 SnGs (3 shorthanded, 1 full) and cashed in 3 (would have been 4, but we’ll leave the bubble suckout of J7o vs my QQ out of here)…so I’m up with one win and two second place finishes. All good.

Tonight I decided to get some cash into Stars again and play the WWdN. 52 players showed up and I busted out in 44th. Really ugly if all you see is 23o, 24o, etc all the time. Then you see some semi-decent hands and bust out quickly. I hold AcJc and get the blinds, in the very next hand I hold AsJs and get reraised…what to do…roughly 900chips, blinds will reach 50/100 when they hit me…so nothing much left to do, although I could have let that one go, but no…I decide that this is a good time to call the push…sure enough opponent shows AKo…K hits the flop, not that she needed it…but better out quickly than to run low on chips again after x hours of poker. So I’m not all that bitter. Off to catch some sleep now…cya all at the WWdN next week…